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PHAETHON; 



OR, 



LOOSE THOUGHTS FOR LOOSE TRINKERS. 



EEV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, 

CANON OF MIDDLEHAM, 
AND RECTOR OF EVERSLEY. 



'« WoRDS are thefooVs eounters, but the wise man's money." 

Trench. 

" Equidem, collabente in Vitium atque errorem loquendi usu, oceasum ejus 
uriis remque humilem atque obscuram subsequi crediderim : verba enim par- 
tim inscita et putida, partiin mendosa et perperain prolata, quid nisi ignavos 
et oscitantes et ad servile quidvis jam olim i)aratos incolarum animos haud 
levi indicio declarant?" — Milton. 



FROM TnE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 




PHILADELPHIA: cJ 
PUBLISHED BY HERMAN HOOKER. 

1854. 






PRINTED BY ISAAC ASHMEAD. 



PHAETHON; 



OR, 



LOOSE THOUGHTS FOR LOOSE TRINKERS. 



■<■•♦»» 



Templeton and I were lounging by the clear 
limestone stream which crossed his park, and 
wound away round wooded hüls toward the 
distant Severn. A loveher fishing morning 
sportsmen never saw. A soft grey under-roof 
of cloud slid on before a soft west wind, and 
here and there a stray gleam of sunhght shot 
into the vale across the purple mountain-tops, 
and awoke into busy Hfe the denizens of the 
water, already quickened by the mysterious 
electric influences of the last night's thunder- 
shower. The long-winged cinnamon-flies spun 
and fluttered over the pools ; the sand-bees 
hummed merrily round their burrows in the 
marly bank ; and delicate iridescent ephemerse 
rose by hundreds from the depths, and dropping 



4 PHAETHON. 

their sliells, floated away, each a tiny Venus 
Anaclyomene, down the glassy ripples of the 
reaches. Every moment a heavy splash beneath 
some overlianging tuft of milfoil or water-hemlock 
proclaimed the death-dooni of a hapless beeile 
who had dropped into the stream beneath ; yet 
still we fished and fished, and canght nothing, 
and seemed utterly careless about catching any- 
thing; tili the old keeper who followed us, 
sighing and shrugging his Shoulders, broke forth 
into open remonstrance : — 

" Excuse my liberty, gentlemen, but what 
ever is the matter with you and master, Sir ? 
I never did see you miss so many honest rises 
before." 

" It is too true," said Templeton to me Avith 
a laugh. " I must confess, I have been dreaming 
instead of fishing the whole morning. But what 
has happened to you, who are not as apt as I 
am to do nothing by trying to do two things 
at once ?" 

" My band may well be somewhat unsteady ; 
for, to teil the truth, I sat up all last night 
writing." 

" A hopeful preparation for a day's fishing in 
limestone water ! But what can have set you on 
Avriting all night, after so busy and talkative an 



PHAETHON. 5 

evening as tlie last, ending too, as it did, some- 
where about half-past twelve ?" 

"Perhaps the said tall^ative evening itself; 
and I suspect, if you will confess the truth, you 
mll say that your morning's meditations are 
running very much in the same Channel." 

"Lewis," said he, after a pause, "go up to 
the hall, and bring some luncheon for us down 
to the löwer waterfall." 

"And a w^heelbarrow to carry home the 
fish, Sir?" 

"If you wish to warm yourself, certainly. 
And now, my good fellow," said he, as the old 
keeper toddled away up the park, " I will open 
my heart — a process for w^hich I have but few 
opportunities here — to an old College friend. I 
am disturbed and saddened by last night's talk, 
and by last night's guest." 

" By the American professor ? How, in the 
name of English exclusiveness, did such a ram- 
pantly heterodox spiritual guerilla invade the 
respectabilities and conservatisms of Hereford- 
shire ?" 

" He was returning from a tour through Wales, 
and had introductions to me from some Man- 
chester friends of mine, to avail himself of 

1'^ 



6 PHAETHON. 

which, I found, he had gone some thkty miles 
out of his way." 

" Coniplimentary to you, at least." 

" To Lady Jane, I suspect, rather than to me ; 
for he told me broadly enough that all the 
flattering attentions which he had received in 
Manchester — where, you know, all such prophets 
are welcomed with open arms, their only creden- 
tials, benig that, whatsoever they believe, they 
shall not beheve the Bible — had not given hini 
the pleasure which he had received from that 
one introduction to what he called Hhe inner 
hearth-hfe of the Engiish landed aristocracy.' 
But what did you think of hiin ?" 

" Do you really wish to knoAv ?" 

"Ido." 

" Then, honestly, I never heard so much 
magniloquent unwisdom talked in the same 
Space of time. It was the sense of shame for 
my race Avhich kept me silent all the evening. 
I could not trust myself to argue with a grey- 
haired Saxon man, whose fifty years of hfe 
seemed to have left him a child, in all but the 
childlike heart which alone can enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." 

" You are severe," said Templeton, smiHngly 



PHAETHON. i 

though, as if his estimate were not veiy different 
from mine. 

" Call one help being severe when one hears 
irreverence pourecl forth from reverend lips ? I 
do not mean merely irreverence for the Catholic 
Creeds ; that to my mind — God forgive me if I 
misjudge him — seemed to me only one fruit of a 
deep root of irreverence for all things as they 
are, even for all things as they seem. Did you 
not remark the audacious contempt for all ages 
but ' our glorious nineteenth Century,' and the 
still deeper contempt for all in the said glorious 
time, who dared to beheve that there was any 
ascertained truth independent of the private 
fancy and opinion of — for I am afraid it came to 
that — him, Professor Windrush, and his circle 
of elect souls ? ' You may beUeve nothing, if 
you like, and welcome ; but if you do take to 
that unnecessary act, you are a fool if you be- 
lieve anything but what I believe ; — though I 
do not choose to state what that is.' . . . . Is 
not that, now, a pretty fair formuhzation of his 
doctrine ?" 

" But, my dear raver," said Templeton, laugh- 
ing, "the man beheved at least in physical 
science. I am sure we heard enough about its 
triumphs." 



8 PHAETHON. 

'^ It may be so. But to me his very ' spirit- 
ualism' seemed more materialistic than his 
physics. His notion seemecl to be, though 
Heaven forbid that I should say that he ei^er 
put it formally before himself " 

" Or anything eise," said Templeton, sotto voce, 

" — that it is the spiritual woiid which is 
governed by physical laws, and the physical by 
spiritual ones ; that white men and women are 
merely the puppets of cerebrations and men- 
tations, and attractions and repulsions, it is the 
trees, and stones, and gases, who have the wiUs 
and the energies, and the faiths and the virtues 
and the personalities." 

" You are caricaturinsr." 

" How so ? IIow can I judge otherwise, when 
I hear a man talking, as he did, of God in terms 
which, every one of them, involved w^hat we call 
the essential properties of matter — space, time, 
passibility, motion ; setting forth phrenology and 
mesmerism as the great organs of education, 
even of the regeneration of mankind ; apologizing 
for the earlier ravings of the Poughkeepsie seer, 
and considering his later eclectico-pantheist 
flirragos as great utterances : white, whenever he 
talked of nature, he showed the most credulous 
craving after everything which we, the country- 



PHAETHON. 



9 



men of Bacon, have been taught to consider un- 
scientific — Ilomoeopathy, Electro-biology, Loves 
of the Plants d la Darwin, Vestiges of Creation, 
Vegetarianisms, Teetotalisms — never mind what, 
provided it was unaccredited or condemned by 
regulär educated men of science ?" 

" But you don't mean to assert that there is 
nothing in any of these theories ?" 

" Of course not. I can no more prove a uni- 
versal negative about them, tlian I can about the 
existence of lifo on the moon. But I do say 
that this contempt for that which has been al- 
ready discovered — this carelessness about induc- 
tion from the normal phenomena, coupled with 
this hankering after theories built upon excep- 
tionable ones — this craving for ' signs and won- 
ders/ which is the sure accompaniment of a 
dying faith in God, and in nature as God's work 
— are Symptoms wliich niake me tremble for the 
fate of physical as well as of spiritual science, 
both in America and in the Americanists here 
at home. As the Professor talked on, I could 
not help thinking of the Neo-Platonists of Alex- 
andria, and their exactly similar course, — down- 
ward from a spiritualism of notions and emo- 
tions, w^hich in every term confesscd its own 
materialism, to the fearful discovery that con- 



10 PHAETHON. 

sciousness does not reveal God, not even matter, 
but only its own existence; and then onward, 
in desperate search after something external 
wherein to trust, toward theurgic fetish worship, 
and the secret virtues of gems and flowers and 
stars ; and, last of all, to the lowest depth of 
bowing statues and winking pictures. The sixth 
Century saw that career, Templeton; the mne- 
teenth may see it re-enacted, with only these 
differences, that the nature-worship which seems 
Coming will be all the more crushing and slavish, 
because we know so much better how vast and 
glorious nature is; and that the superstitions 
will be more clumsy and foolish in proportion as 
our Saxon brain is less acute and discursive, and 
our education less severely scientific, than those 
of the old Greeks." 

" Silence, raver !" cried Templeton, throwing 
himself on the grass in fits of laughter. " So 
the Professors grandchildren wiU have either 
turned Papists, or be bowing down before rusty 
locomotives and broken electric telegraphs ? But, 
my good friend, you surely do not take Pro- 
fessor Windrush for a fair sample of the great 
American people ?" 

" God forbid that so unpractical a talker should 
be a sample of the most practical people upon 



PHAETHON. 11 



earth. The Americans have their engineers, 
their geographers, their astronomers, their scien- 
tific chemists ; few indeed, but such as bid fair 
to rival those of any nation upon earth. But 
these,Hke other true worl^ers, hold their tongues 
and do their business." 

" And they have a few indigenous authors too : 
you must have read the ' Biglow Papers/ and 
the ' Fable for Critics/— and last but not least, 
^Uncle Toni's Cabinf " 

" Yes ; and I have had far less fear for Ame- 
ricans since I read that book ; for it showed me 
that there was right healthy power, artistic as 
well as intellectual, aniong them even now,— 
ready, when their present borrowed peacock's 
feathers have faUen off, to come forth and prove 
that the Yankee Eagle is a right gallant bird, if 
he will but trust to his own natural plumage." 

" And they have a few statesmen also." 

" But they are curt, plain-spoken, practical, — 
in everything antipodal to the knot of hapless 
men, who, unable from some defect or morbidity 
to help on the real movement of their nation, 
are fain to get their bread with tongue and pen, 
by retailing to ^ silly women,' ' ever learning 
and never Coming to the knowledge of the truth/ 
second-hand German eclecticisms, now exploded 



12 PHAETHON. 

even in the country where they arose, and the 
very froth and scum of the Medea's caldron, in 
which the disjeda memhra of old Calvinism are 
pitiably seething." 

" Ah ! It has been always the plan, you know, 
in England, as well as in America, courteously 
to avoid taking up a German theory tili the 
Germans had quite done with it, and thrown it 
away for something new. But what are we to 
say of those who are trying to introduce into 
England these very Americanized Germanisms, 
as the only teaching which can suit the needs of 
the old World?" 

^^We will, if we are in a vulgär humonr, 
apply to them a certain old proverb ab out teach- 
ing one's grandmother a certain simple Operation 
on the egg of the domestic fowl ; but we wdll no 
less take shame to ourselves, as sons of Alma 
Mater, that such nonsense can get even a day's 
hearing, either among the daughters of Manches- 
ter manufacturers, or among London working 
men. Had we taught them what we were tauglit 
in the schools, Templeton — " 

" Alas, my friend, we must ourselves have 
learnt it first. I have no right to throw stones 
at the poor Professor ; for I could not answer 
him." 



PHAETHON. 13 

" Do not suppose that I can either. All I say 
is, — mankind has not lived in vain. Least of all 
has it lived in vain during the last eighteen hun- 
dred years. It has gained something of eternal 
trutti in every age, and that which it has gained 
is as fresh and young now as ever ; and I will 
not throw away the bird in the hand, for any 
number of birds in the bush." 

" Especially when yoii suspect niost of them 
to be only wooden pheasants, set up to delude 
poachers. Well, you are far niore of a Philister 
and a Conservative than I thought you." 

" The ne w is Coming, I doubt not ; but it 
must grow organically out of the Old — not root 
the old up, and stick itself füll grown into the 
place thereof, like a Fr euch tree of liberty — 
sure of much the same fate. Other foundation 
can no man lay than that which is laid already, 
in Spiritual thmgs or in physical; as the Pro- 
fessor and his school will surely find." 

" You recollect to whom the Bible appHes that 
text?" 

" I do." 

" And yet you say you cannot answer the 
Professor ?" 

I do not care to do so. There are certain 
root-truths which I know, because they have 
2 



14 PHAETHON. 

been discovered and settled for ages; and in- 
stead of accepting the challenge of every I-know- 
not-wliom to re-examine them, and begin the 
world's work all over again, I will test his tlieo- 
ries by them ; and if they fall to coincide, I will 
hear no more speecli about the details of the 
branches and flowers, for I shall know the root 
is rotten." 

" But he, too, acknowledged certain of those 
root-truths/' said Templeton, Avho seemed to 
have a Hngering sympathy with my victim ; " he 
insisted most strongly, and spoke, you will not 
deny, eloquently and nobly on the Unity of the 
Deity." 

^' On the non-Trinity of it, rather ; for I will 
not degiiide the word ^Him/ by applying it 
here. But, teil nie honestly — cest le timhre qiii 
fait la miisique — did his ^ Unity of the Deity' 
sound in your English Bible-bred heart at all 
like that ancient, human, personal ' Hear, 
Israel ! the Lord thy God is one Lord ?' " 

" Much more like ' The Something our No- 
thing is one Something/ " 

" May we not suspect, then, that his notion 
of the ' Unity of the Deity' does not quite 
coincide with the foundation akeady laid, Avhose- 
soever eise may ?" 



PHAETHON. 15 

" Yoii are assuming rather hastily." 

^'Peiiiaps I may prove also, some clay or 
other. Do you tliink, moreover, that the theory 
which he so boldly started, when liis nerves 
and his manners were relieved from the mi- 
wonted pressure by Lady Jane and the ladies 
going up stah\s, was part of the same old 
foundation ?" 

"Which, then?" 

"That, if a man does but believe a thing, 
he has a right to speak it and act on it, right 
or wrong. Have you forgotten his vindication 
of your friend, the radical voter, and his ' spirit 
Oftruth?'" 

" What, the worthy who, when I canvassed 
him as the liberal candidate for * * * *, and 
promised to support complete freedom of reli- 
gious opinion, tested me by breaking out into 
such blasphemous ribaldry as made nie run out 
of the house, and then went and voted against 
me as a bigot ?" 

" I mean him, of course. The Professor 
really seemed to admire the man, as a more 
brave and conscientious hero than himself I 
am not squeamish, as you know : but I am 
afraid that I was quite rüde to him when he 
went as far as that." 



16 PHAETHON. 

" What, — when you told him that you tliought 
that, after all^ the old tlieory of the Divine 
Right of Kings was as plausible as the new 
theory of the Divine Right of Blasphemy? — 
My dear fellow, do not fret yourself on that 
point. He seemed to take it rather as a com- 
pliment to his own audacity, and whispered to 
me that ' The Divine Right of Blasphemy' was 
an expression of which Theodore Parker him- 
self need not have been ashamed." 

" He was pleased to be complimentary. But, 
teil me, what was it in his oratory which has so 
vexed the soul of the country squire ?" 

" That very argument of his, among many 
things. I saw, or rather feit, that he was 
wrong ; and yet, as I have said already, I could 
not answer him; and, had he not been my 
guest, should have got thoroughly cross with 
him as 2ipis allerg 

" I saw it, But my friend, used we not to 
read Plato together, and enjoy him together, in 
old Cambridge days ? Do you not think that 
Socrates might at all events have driven the 
Professor into a corner?" 

"He might; but I cannot. Is that, then, 
what you were writing ab out all last night ?" 

" It was. I could not help, when I went out 



PHAETHON. 17 

011 the terrace to smoke my last cigar, fancying 
to myself liow Socrates might have seemed to 
set you, and tlie Professor, and tliat warm- 
hearted, riglit-lieaded, wrong-tongued High- 
Church Curate, all together by the ears, and 
made confusion worse confounded for the time 
being, and yet have left for each of you some 
hint whereby you might see the darhng truth, 
for which you were barking, all the more clearly 
in the light of the one which you were howKng 
down." 

" And so you sat up, and — I thought the cor- 
ridor smelt somewhat of smoke." 

" Forgivej and I will confess. I wrote a dia- 
logue ;— and here it is, if you choose to hear it. 
If there are a few passages, or even many, which 
Plato would not have w^ritten, you will consider 
my age and inexperience, and forgive." 

" My dear fellow, you forgot that I, hke you, 
have been ten years away from dear old Ahna- 
Mater, Plato, the boats, and Potton Wood. My 
authorities now are Morton on Solls, and Miles 
on the Horse's Foot. Read on, fearless of my 
criticisms. Here is the waterfall; we will settle 
ourselves on Jane's favorite seat. You shall 
discourse, and I, tili Lewis brings the luncheon, 
will smoke my cigar ; and if I seem to be look- 

9:1: 



18 PHAETHON. 

ing at the mountain, don't fancy that I am only 
counting how many young grouse those heath- 
burning worthies will have left me by the 
twelfth." 

So we sat down, and I began : — 



PHAETHON. 



Alcibiades and I walked into the Pnyx early 
the other morning, before the people assembled. 
There we saw Socrates standing, having his face 
turne d toward the rismg sun. Approaching him, 
we perceived that he was praying ; and that so 
ardently, that we touched him on the Shoulder 
before he became aware of our presence. 

" You seem Hke a man fiUed with the God^ 
Socrates," said Alcibiades. 

" Would that were true," answered he, " both 
of nie and of all who will counsel here tliis day. 
In fact, I was praying for that very thing; 
namely, that they might have light to see the' 
truth, in whatsoever matter might be discussed 
here." 

" And for me also ?" said Alcibiades ; — " but 
I have prepared my speech already." 

" And for you also, if you desire it, — even 
though some of your periods should be spoiled 
thereby. But why are you both here so early, 
before any business is stirring ?" 



20 PHAETHON. 

"We were discussing," saicl I, "that very 
thing for whicli we foimd you praying, namely 
truth, and what it.might be." 

" Perhaps you went a worse way toward dis- 
covering it tlian I did. But let us hear. 
Whence did the discussion arise ?" 

'' From something," said Alcibiades, " Avhich 
Protagoras said in his lecture yesterday — How 
truth was what each man troweth, or believeth, 
to be true. ^So that,' he said, ^one thing is true 
to me, if I beheve it true, and another opposite 
thing to you, if you believe that opposite. For,' 
continued he, ' there is an objective and a sub- 
jective truth; the former, doubtless, one and 
absolute, and contained in the nature of each 
thing ; but the other manifokl and relative, vary- 
ing with the faculties of each perceiver thereof.' 
But as each man's faculties, he said, were dif- 
ferent from his neighbour's, and all more or less 
imperfect, it was impossible that the absolute 
objective truth of any thing could be seen by any 
mortal, but only some partial approximation, 
and, as it were, sketcli of it, according as the 
object was represented with more or less refrac- 
tion on the mirror of his subjectivity. And 
therefore, as the true inquirer deals only with 
the possible, and lets the impossible go, it was 



PHAETHON. 21 

tlie business of the wise man, shunning the 
search after absolute triith as an impious attempt 
of the Titans to scale Olympus, to busy himself 
humbly and practically with subjective trutb, 
and with those methods — rhetoric, for instance 
— hf which he can make the subjective opinions 
of others either similar to his own, or, leaving 
them as they are — for it may be very often un- 
necessary to change them, — useful to his own 
ends." 

Then Socrates, laughing, — 

"My fine fellow, you will have made more 
than one oration in the Pnyx to-day. And in- 
deed, I myself feit quite exalted, and rapt aloft, 
like Bellerophon on Pegasus, upon the eloquence 
of Protagoras and you. But yet forgive nie this 
one thing ; for my mother bare nie, as you know, 
a man-midwife, after her own trade, and not a 
sage." 

Alcibiades. "Whatthen?" 

SocRATES. " This, my astonishing friend — 
for really I am altogether astonished and struck 
dumb, as I always am whensoever I hear a bril- 
liant talker like you discoux'se concerning objec- 
tivities and subjectivities, and such mysterious 
words ; at such moments I am hke an old war- 
horse, who, though he will rush on levelled 



22 PHAETHON. 

lances, shuclders and sweats with terror at a boy 
rattling pebbles in a bladder ; and I feel altogether 
dizzy, and dread lest I should sufFer some such 
transformation as Scylla, wlien I hear awful 
words, like incantations, pronounced over me, of 
which I, being no sage, understand nothiHg. — 
But teil me now, Alcibiades ; did the opinion of 
Protagoras altogether please you ?" 

A. "Wliy not? Is it not certain that two 
equally honest men may differ in their opinions 
on the sanie matter ?" 

S. " Undeniable." 

A. " But if each is equally sincere in speaking 
what he believes, is not each equally moved by 
the spirit of truth ?" 

S. " You seem to have been lately initiated, 
and that not at Eleusis merely, nor in the Cabiria, 
but rather in some Persian or Babylonian mys- 
teries, when you thus discourse of spirits. But 
you, Phaethon," (turning to me,) " how did you 
like the periods of Protagoras ?" 

" Do not ask me, Socrates," said I, " for indeed 
we have fought a weary battle together ever since 
sundown last night ; and all that I had to say I 
learnt from you." 

S. " From me, my good fellow ?" 

Phaethon. " Yes, indeed. I seemed to have 



PHAETHON. 23 

lieard from you that trutli is simply ^facts as tliey 
are.' But when I urged this on Alcibiades, his 
arguments seemed superior to mine." 

A. ^'But I have been telling him, drimk and 
sober, that it is my opinion also as to what truth 
is. Ohly Ij with Protagoras^ distinguish between 
objective fact and subjective opinion." 

S. '^ Doing riglitly, too, fair youth. But how 
comes it then that you and Phaethon cannot 
agreoi : 

"That," Said I, "you know better than either 

Of US." 

" You seem both of you/' said Socrates, " to 
be, as usual, in the family way. Shall I exercise 
my profession on you ?" 

" No, by Zeus !" answered Alcibiades, laugh- 
ing ; " I fear theo, thou juggler, lest I suffer once 
again the same fate with the woman in the myth, 
and after I have conceived a fair man-child, and, 
as I fancy, brought it forth, thou hold up to the 
people some dead puppy, or log, or what not, and 
cry, ' Look what Alcibiades has produced !" 

S. "But, beautiful youth, before I can do 
that, you will have spoken your oration on the 
bema, and all the people will be ready and able 
to say, ' Absurd ! nothing but what is f^xir ean 
come from so fair a body.' Come, let us con- 
sider the question together." 



24 PHAETHON. 

I assented willingly ; and Alcibiades, mincing 
and pouting, after his fashion, still was loth to 
refuse. 

S. "Let US see, then. Alcibiades distin- 
guishes, he says, between objective fact and 
subjective opinion?" # 

A. " Of coui'se I do." 

S. " But not, I presume, between objective 
truth, and subjective trutli, whereof Protagoras 
spoke ?" * 

A. " What trap are you laying now ? I dis- 
tinguish between theni also, of course." 

S. " Teil me, then, dear youth, of your indul- 
gence, what they are ; for I am shamefully Igno- 
rant on the matter." 

A. " Why, do they not call a thing objectively 
true, when it is true absolutely in itself ; but 
subjectively true, when it is true in the beHef 
of a particular person ?" 

S. " — Though not necessarily true objectively, 
that is, absolutely and in itself ?" 

A. "No." 

S. " But possibly true so ?" 

A. "Of course." 

S. " Now, teil me — a thing is objectively true, 
is it not, when it is a fact as it is ?" 

A. "Yes." 

S. " And when it is a fact as it is not, it is 



PHAETHON. 25 

objectively false ; for sucli a fact Avould not be 
true absolutely, and in itself, would it ?" 

A. '^ Of course not." 

S. " Such a fact avouM be, therefore, no fact, 
and nothing." 

A. "Whyso?" 

S. " Because, if a thing exists, it can only 
exist as it is, not as it is not ; at least, my opin- 
ion inclincs that way." 

" Certainly not," said I ; ^'^ why do you haggle 
so, Alcibiades ?" 

S. " Fair and softly, Phaethon ! How do you 
know that he is not fighting for wife and child, 
and the altars of bis gods ? But if he will agree 
with you and me, he will confess that a thing 
which is objectively false does not exist at all, 
and is nothing." 

A. " I suppose it is necessary to do so. But 
I know whither you are strugghng." 

S. " To this, dear youth, that, therefore, if a 
thing subjectively true be also objectively false, 
it does not exist, and is nothing." 

" It is so," said I. 

S. " Let US, then, let nothing go its own way, 
white we go on ours with that which is only 
objectively true, lest coming to a river over which 
it is subjectively true to us that there is a bridge, 

o 

O 



26 PHAETHON, 

and trying to walk over that work of our own 
mind, but no one's hands, the bridge prove to 
be objectively false, and we, Walking over the 
bank into the water, be set free from that which 
is >subjective on the further bank of Styx." 

Then I, langhing, " This hardly coincides, 
Alcibiades, with Protagoras's opinion that sub- 
jective trnth was alone usefal." 

" But rather proves," said Socrates, " that 
nndiluted draughts of it are of a hurtful and 
poisonous nature, and reqnire to be tempered 
with somewhat of objective truth, before itis safe 
to use them ; — at least in the case of bridges." 

" Did I not teil you," interrupted Alcibiades, 
" how the old deceiver would try to put nie to 
bed of some dead puppy or log? Or do you 
not see how, in order, after his custom, to raise 
a laugh about the whole question by vulgär 
examples, he is blinking what he knows as w^ell 
asir 

S. " What then, fair youth ?" 

A. " That Protagoras was not speaking about 
bridges, or any other merely physical tliings, on 
which no difFerence of opinion need occur, be- 
cause every one can satisfy himself by simply 
using his senses ; but concerning moral and 
intellectual matters, which are not cognizable by 



PHAETHON. 27 

the senses, and therefore permit, without blame, 
a greater diversity of opiiiion. Error on such 
points, he told iis — on the subject of religion, for 
example — was both pardonable and harmless ; 
for no blame coiüd be imputed to the man who 
acted faithfully up to his own belief, whatsoever 
that might be." 

S. " Bravely spoken of him, and worthily of 
a free state. But teil me, Alcibiades, with what 
matters does rehgion deal ?" 

A. " With the Gods." 

S. " Then it is not hurtfiü to speak false 
things of the Gods ?" 

A. " Not miless you know them to be false." 

S. "" But ans wer me this, Alcibiades. If you 
made a mistake concerning numbers, as that twice 
two made five, might it not be hurtful to you ?" 

A. " Certainly ; for I might pay away five 
obols instead of four." 

S. " And so be punished, not by any anger 
of two and two against you, but by those very 
necessary laws of number, which you had mis- 
taken ?" 

A. "Yes." 

S. " Or if you made a mistake concerning 
music, as that two consecutive notes could pro- 
duce harmony, that opinion also, if you acted 
upon it, would be hurtful to you ?" 



28 PHAETHON. 

A. " Certainly ; for I should make a discord, 
and pain my own ears, and my hearers'." 

S. "And, in this case also, be punished, not 
by any anger of the lyre against you, but by 
those very necessary laAvs of nmsic which you 
had mistaken ?" 

A. "Yes." 

S. " Or if you mistook concerning a brave 
man, believing him to be a coward, might not 
this also be hurtful to you ? If, for instance, 
you attacked him carelessly, expecting him to 
run away, and he defended himself valiantly, and 
conquered you ; or if you neglected to call for 
his help in need, expecting him falsely, as in the 
former case, to run away; would not such a 
mistake be hurtful to you, and punish you, not 
by any anger of the man against you, but by 
your mistake itself ?" 

A. " It is evident." 

S. " We may assume, then, that such mistakes 
at least are hurtful, and that they are liable to be 
punished by the very laws of that concerning 
which we mistake ?" 

A. " We may so assume." 

S. " Suppose, then, w^e were to say, ^ What 
argument is this of yours, Protagoras ? — that 
concerning lesser things, both intellectual and 
moral, such as concerning number, music, or 



PHAETHON. 29 

the character of a man, mistakes are liurtfiil, 
and liable to bring punishment, in proportion 
to our need of using those things : but con- 
cerning the Gods, the veiy authors and law- 
givers of number, music, human character, and 
all other things whatsoever, mistakes are of no 
consequence, nor in any way hurtfui to man, 
who Stands in need of their help, not only in 
stress of battle, once or twice in his life, as 
he might of the brave man, but always and 
in all things both outward and inward ? Does 
it not seem stränge to you, for it does to 
me, that to make mistakes concerning such 
beings should not bring an altogether infinite 
and daily punishment, not by any resentment of 
theirs, but, as in the case of music or numbers, 
by the very fact of our having mistaken the laws 
of their being, on which the whole universe 
depends! — What do you suppose Protagoras 
would be able to answ^er, if he faced the question 
boldly ?" 

A. "I cannottell." 

S. "Nor I either. Yet one thing more it 
may be worth our while to examine. If one 
should mistake concerning God, will his error 
be one of excess, or defect ?" 

A, ^^How cani teil?" 

3- 



30 PHAETHON. 

S. " Let US see. Is not Zeus more perfect 
than all other beings ?" 

A. " Certainly, if it be true that, as they say, 
tlie perfection of each kind of being is derived 
from Hirn; He must tlierefore be Himself more 
perfect than any one of those perfections." 

S. " Well argued. Tlierefore, if He conceived 
of Himself, his conception of Himself would be 
more perfect than that of any man concerning 
Him?" 

A. " Assuredly ; if He haA^e that faculty, He 
must needs have it in perfection." 

S. " Suppose, then, that He conceived of one 
of his own properties, such as his justice ; how 
large would that perfect conception of his be ?" 

A. " But how can I teil, Socrates ?" 

S. " My good friend, would it not be exactly 
commensurate with that justice of his ?" 

A. "How then?" 

S. Wherein consists the perfection of any 
conception, save in this,. that it be the exact 
copy of that whereof it is conceived, and neither 
greater nor less ?" 

A. " I see now." 

S. " Without the Pythia's help, I should say. 
But, teil me — We agree that Zeus's conception 
of his own justice will be exactly commensurate 
with his justice ?" 



PH A ET HON. 31 

A. " We do." 

S. '^ But man's conception thereof, it has been 
agreed, would be certainly less perfect than 
Zeus's ?" 

A. "Itwoiüd." 

S. " Marij then, it seems, woiüd always con- 
ceive God to be less just than God conceives 
himself to be ?" 

A. " He would." 

S. " And therefore to be less just, according 
to the argument, than he really is?" 

A. "True." 

S. " And therefore his error concerning Zeus, 
would be m this case an error of defect ?" 

A. "It would." 

S. "And so on of each of his other proper- 
ties ?" 

A. " The same argument would likewise, as 

far as I can see, apply to them." 

S. " So that, on the whole, man, by the 
unassisted power of his own faculty, will always 

conceive Zeus to be less just, wise, good, and 

beautiful than He is ?" 

A. " It seems probable." 

S. " But does not that seem to you hurtful ?" 

A. " Why so ?" 

S. " As if, for instance, a man believing that 



32 PHAETHON. 

Zeus loves him less than He really cloes, slioiüd 
become superstitious ancl self-tormenting. Or, 
believins; that Zeus will sruicle liim less than He 
really will, he should go his own way through 
life without looking for that guidance : or if, 
believing that Zeus cares about his conquering 
his passions less than He really does, he should 
become careless and despairing in the struggle : 
or if, believing that Zeus is less interested in the 
welfare of mankind than He really is, he should 
himself neglect to assist them, and so lose the 
glory of being called a benefactor of his country : 
would not all these mistakes be hurtful ones ?" 

" Certainly," said I : but Alcibiades was silent. 

S. " And would not these mistakes, by the 
hypothesis, themselves punish him who made 
them, without any resentment whatsoever, or 
Nemesis of the gods, being required for his 
chastisement ?" 

" It seems so," said I. 

S. " But can Ave say of such mistakes, and of 
the härm which may accrue from them, anything 
but that they must both be infinite ; seeing that 
they are mistakes concerning an infinite Being, 
and his infinite properties, on every one of which, 
and on all together, our daily existence depends ?" 

P. " It seems so." 



PHAETHON. 33 

S. " So that, until such a man s error con- 
cerning Zeus, the source of all things, is cleared 
up, either in this life or in some future one, we 
cannot but fear for him infinite confusion, misery, 
and härm, in all matters which he may take in 
hand?" 

Then Alcibiades, angrily, — " What ugly mask 
is this you hai^e put on, Socrates ? You speak 
rather hke a priest trying to frighten rustics into 
paying their first-fruits, than a philosopher in- 
quiring after that which is beautiful. But you 
shall never terrify me into believing that it is 
not a noble thing to speak out whatsoever a man 
believes, and to go forward boldly in the spirit 
of truth." 

S. " Feeling first, I hope, with your stafF, as 
would be but reasonable in the case of the bridge, 
whether your belief was objectively or only sub- 
jectively true, lest you should fall through your 
subjective bridge into objective water. Never- 
theless, leaving the bridge and the water, let us 
examine a little what this said spirit of truth 
may be. How do you define it ?" 

A. " I assert, that whosoever says honestly 
what he believes, does so by the spirit of truth." 

S. " Then if Lyce, patting those soft cheeks 
of yours, were to say, ' Alcibiades, thou art the 



34 PHAETHON. 

fairest youth in Athens/ slie woiüd speak by tlie 
spirit of truth ?" 

A. " They say so." 

S. " And they say rightly. But if Lyce, as 
is her custom, wished by so saying to cheat you 
into belle ving that she loved you, and thereby 
to wheedle you out of a new shawl, she would 
still speak by the spirit of truth ?" 

A. " I suppose so." 

S. " But if, again, she said the same thing to 
Phaethon, she would still speak by the spirit of 
truth?" 

" By no means, Socrates/' said I, laughing. 

S. " Be silent, fair boy ; you are out of court 
as an interested party. Alcibiades shall answer. 
If Lyce, being really mad Avith love, hke Sappho, 
were to belle ve Phaethon to be fairer than you, 
and say so, she would still speak by the spirit of 
truth?" 

A. " I suppose so." 

S. "Do not frown; your beauty is in no 
question. Only she would then be saying what 
is not true." 

" I must answer for hini after all," said I. 

S. " Then it seems, from what has been 
agreed, that it is indifferent to the spirit of truth, 
whether it speak truth or not. The spirit seems 



PHAETHON. 35 



to be of an enviable serenity. But suppose again, 
that I believed that Alcibiades had an ulcer 
on bis leg, and were to proclaim tbe same now to 
the people, when tbey come into tbe Pnyx, should 
I not be speaking by the spirit of trutb?" 

A. " But that would be a shameful and black- 
guardly action." 

S. "Be it so. It seems, therefore, that it 
is mdüFerent to the spuit of truth whether that 
which it aßirms be honorable or blackguardly. 
Is it not so ?" 

A. " It seems so, most certainly, in that case 
at least." 

S. " And in others, as I think. But teil me 
— Is not the man who does what he believes, as 
much moved by this your spirit of truth as he 
who says what he believes ?" 

A. " Certainly he is." 

S. " Then, if I believed it right to he or steal, 
I, in lying or steahng, should lie or steal by the 
spirit of truth ?" 

A. " Certainly : but that is impossible." 

S. " My fine fellow, and wherefore ? I have 
heard of a nation among the Indians, who hold 
it a sacred duty to murder every one, not of 
their own tribe, whom they can waylay ; and 
when they are taken and punished by the rulers 



36 PHAETHON. 

of that countiy, die joyfully imder the greatest 
torments, believing themselves certain of an 
entrance into the Elysian Fields, in proportion 
to the number of murders which they have com- 
mitted." 

A. " They must be impious wretches." 

S. " Be it so. But believing themselves to 
be right, they commit murder by the spirit of 
truth." 

A. " It seems to foUow from the argument." 

S. " Then it is indifferent to the spirit of 
truth, whether the action which it prompts be 
right or wrong ?" 

A. " It must be confessed." 

S. " It is therefore not a moral faculty, this 
spirit of truth. Let us see now whether it be 
an intellectual one. How are intellectual things 
defined, Phaethon ? Teil me, for you are cun- 
ning in such matters." 

P. " Those things which have to do with pro- 
cesses of the mind." 

S. " With right processes, or with wrong ?" 

P. " With right, of course." 

S. " And processes for what purpose ?" 

P. " For the discovery of facts." 

S. " Of facts as they are, or as they are not ?" 

P. "As they are." 

S. " And he who discovers facts as they are, 



PHAETHON. 37 

cliscovers tmth ; while he who discovers facts as 
they are not, discovers falseliood ?" 

P. " He discovers nothing, Socrates." 

S. ^'True; but it has been agreed abeady 
that the spirit of truth is indifferent to the 
question whether facts be true or false, but only 
concerns itself with the sincere affirmation of 
them, whatsoever they niay be. Much more 
then must it be indifferent to tliose processes by 
which they are discovered." 

P. " HoAV so ?" 

S. " Because it only concerns itself Avith affir- 
mation concerning facts; but these processes 
are anterior to that aflirmation." 

P. " I comprehend." 

S. "And much more is it indifferent to 
whether those are right processes or not." 

P. " Much more so." 

S. " It is therefore not intellectual. It re- 
mains, therefore, that it must be some merely 
physical faculty, like that of fearing, hungering, 
or enjoying the sexual appetite." 

A. " Absurd, Socrates !" 

8. " That is the argument's concern, not 
ours : let us follow manfuUy withersoever it 
may lead us." 

A. " Lead on, thou sophist !" 
4 



38 PHAETHON. 

S. " It was agreed, tlien, tliat he wlio does 
what he thinks right, does so bj the sphit of 
truth — was it not ?" 

A. " It was." 

S. " Then he who eats when he thinks that 
he ought to eat, does so by the spirit of truth ?" 

A. "Whatnext?" 

S. '' This next, that he who blows his nose 
when he thinks that it wants blowing, blows his 
nose by the spirit of truth." 

A. "Whatnext?" 

S. " Do not frown, friend. Believe me, in 
such days as these, I honor even the man who 
is honest enough to bloAV his nose because he 
finds that he ought to do so. But teil me, — a 
horse, when he shies at a beggar, does not he 
also do so by the spirit of truth? For he 
believes sincerely the beggar to be something 
formidable, and honestly acts upon his convic- 
tion." 

" Not a doubt of it," said I, laughing, in spite 
of myself, at Alcibiades's countenance. 

" S. It is in danger, then, of proving to be some- 
thing quite brutish and doggish, this spirit of 
truth. I should not wonder, therefore, if we 
found it proper to be restrained." 

A. '' IIow so, thou hair-splitter ?" 



PHAETIION. 39 

S. " Have we not provecl it to be common to 
man and animals : but are not those passions 
which we have in common with animals to be 
restrained ?" 

P. " Restrain the spirit of truth, Socrates ?" 

S. " If it be doggishly inclined. As, for in- 
stance, if a man knew that bis father had com- 
mitted a shameful act, and were to publish it, 
he would do so by the spirit of truth. Yet such 
an act would be blackguardly, and to be re- 
strained." 

P. " Of course." 

S. " But much more, if he accused his father 
only on his own private suspicion, not having 
Seen him commit the act ; while many others, 
who had watched his father's character more 
than he did, assured him that he was mistaken." 

P. " Such an act would be to be restrained, 
not merely as blackguardly, but as impious." 

S. " Or if a man believed things derogatory 
to the character of the Gods, not having seen 
them do wrong himself, Avhile all those who had 
given themselves to the study of divine things 
assured him that he was mistaken, would he not 
be bound to restrain an inchnation to speak such 
things, even if he beHeved them ?" 

P. " Surely, Socrates ; and that even if he 



40 PHAETHON. 

believed that the Gods did not exist at all. For 
there would be far more cliance that he alone 
was wrong, and the many right, than that the 
many were wrong, and he alone right. He would 
therefore commit an msolent and conceited ac- 
tion, and, nioreover, a cruel and shameless one ; 
for he would certainly make miserable, if he 
were believed, the hearts of many virtuous per- 
sons who had never harmed him, for no imme- 
diate or demonstrable purpose except that of 
pleasing his own self-will; and that much more, 
were he wrong in his assertion." 

S. " Ilere, then, is another case in whicli it 
seems proper to restrain the spirit of truth, 
whatsoever it may be ?" 

P. " What, then, are we to say of those who 
speak fearlessly and openly their own opinions 
on every subject? for, in spite of all this, one 
cannot but admire them, whether rationally or 
irrationally." 

S. " We will alloAv them at least the honor 
which we do to the wild boar, who rushes fiercely 
through thorns and brambles upon the dogs, not 
to be turned aside by spears or tree-trunks, and 
indeed charges for ward the more yaliantly the 
more tightly he shuts his eyes. That praise we 
can bestow on him, but, I fear, no higher one. 



PHAETHON. 



41 



It is expedient, nevertheless, to liave such a 
temperament, as it is to have a good memory, or 
a loud voice, or a straight nose, unlike mine ; 
only, like otlier animal passions, it must be re- 
strained and regulated by reason and the law of 
right, so as to employ itself only on such mat- 
ters and to such a degree as they prescribe." 

" It may seem so in the argument," said I. 
" Yet no argument, even of yours, Socrates, with 
your pardon, shall convince nie that the spirit 
of truth is not fair and good, ay, the neblest 
possession of all ; throwing away which, a man 
throAVS away his shield, and becomes unworthy 
of the Company of Gods or men." 

S. " Or of beasts either, as it seems to me 
and the argument. Nevertheless, to this point 
has the argument, in its cunning and mahce, 
brought US by crooked paths. Can we find no 
escape ( 

P. " I know none." 

S. " But may it not be possible that we, not 
having been initiated, like Alcibiades, into the 
Babylonian mysteriös, have somewhat mistaken 
the meaning of that expression, ' spirit of truth ?' 
For truth we defined to be ' fiicts as they are.' 
The spirit of truth then should mean, should it 
not, the spirit of facts as they are ?" 



42 PH A ET HON. 

P. '' It should." 

S. " But what sliall we say tliat this expres- 
sioiij in its turn, means ? The spirit wliich 
makes facts as tliey are ?" 

A. " Surely not. That woulcl be the snpreme 
Demiurgus Himself." 

S. " Of whom you were not speaking, when 
you spoke of the spirit of truth ?" 

A. " Certainly not. I was speaking of a 
spirit in man." 

S. " And belonging to hini ?" 

A. ^^Yes." 

S. "And doing — what, with regard to facts 
as they are ? for this is just the thing which 
puzzles me." 

A. " Telling facts as they are." 

S. " Without seeing them as they are ?" 

A. " How you bore one ! of course not, It 
sees facts as they are, and therefore teils them." 

S. " But perhaps it might see them as they 
are, and find it expedient, being of the same 
temperament as I, to hold its tongue about them ? 
Would it then be still the spirit of truth T 

A. " It would, of course." 

S. " The man then who possesses the sjmit 
of truth will see facts as they are ?" 

A. " Ile will." 



THAETHON. 43 

S. " And conversely ?" 

A. "Yes." 

S. " But if he sees anything oiüy as it seems 
to him, and is not in fact, he will not, with 
regard to that thing, see it by the spirit of 
truth?" 

A. " I suppose not. 

S. " Neither then will he be able to speak of 
it by the spirit of truth." 

A. "Why?" 

S. " Because, by what we agreed before, it 
will not be there to speak of, my wondrous 
friend ! For it appeared to us, if I recollect 
right, that facts can only exist as they are, and 
not as they are not, and that therefore the spirit 
of truth had nothing to do with any facts but 
those which are." 

" But," I inteiTupted, " dear Socrates, I 
fear much that if the spirit of truth be such as 
this, it must be beyond the reach of man." 
■ S. "Why then?" 

P. ^^ Because the immortal Gods only can see 
things as they really are, having alone made all 
things, and ruling them all according to the laws 
of each. They therefore, I much fear, will be 
alone able to behold them, how they are really 
in their inner nature and properties, and not 



44 PHAETHON. 

merely from the outside, and by guess, as we 
do. How then can we obtain such a spirit our- 
selves ?" 

S. " Dear boy, you seem to wish that I should, 
as usualj put you ofF with a myth, when you 
begin to ask me about those who know far more 
about me than I do about them. Nevertheless, 
shall I teil you a myth?" 

P. " If you have notliing better." 
S. " They say, then, that Prometheus, when 
he grew to man's estate, found mankmd, though 
they were like him in form, utterly brutish and 
Ignorant, so that, as iEschylus says : — 

' Seeing they saw in vain, 
Hearing they heard not ; but were like the shapes 
Of dreams, and long timc did confuse all things 
At random :' 

being, as I suppose, led, Hke the animals, only 
by their private judgments of things as they 
seemed to each man, and enslaved to that sub- 
jective truth, wdiich w^e^ found to be utterly 
careless and Ignorant of facts as they are. But 
Prometheus, taking pity on them, determined in 
his mind to free them from that slavery and to 
teach them to rise above the beasts, by seeing 
things as they are. He therefore made them 



niAETITON. 45 

acquainted with the secrets of nature, and taught 
tliem to biiild liouses, to work in wood and 
metalsj to observe the courses of the stars, and 
all other such arts and sciences, which if any 
man attempts to follow accordmg to his private 
opinion, and not according to the rules of that 
art^ which are indepcndent of him and of his 
opinions, being discovered from the unchange- 
ahle laws of things as they are, he will fail. But 
yet, as the myth relates, they became only a 
more cunning sort of animals ; not being whoUy 
freed from their original slavery to a certain 
subjective opinion about themselves^ that each 
man should, by means of those arts and sciences, 
please and help himself only. Fearing, there- 
fore, lest their increased strength and cunning 
should only enable them to prey upon each other 
all the more fiercely, he stole fire from heaven, 
and gave to each man a share thereof for his 
hearth, and to each Community for their common 
altar. And by the hght of this celestial fire 
they learnt to see those celestial and eternal 
bonds between man and man, as of husband to 
wife, of father to child, of Citizen to his country, 
and of master to servant, without which man is 
]jut a biped without feathers, and which are in 
themselves, being independent of the flux of 



4G PHAETHON. 

matter and time, most truly facts as they are. 
And since that time, wliatsoever household or 
nation has allowed these fires to become extin- 
guished, has sunk down again to the level of the 
brutes : while those who have passed them down 
to their children burning bright and strong, be- 
come partakers of the bhss of the Heroes, in 
the Happy Islands. It seems to nie then, 
Phaethon and Alcibiades, that if we find om'- 
selves in anywise destitute of this heavenly fire, 
we should pray for the Coming of that day, when 
Prometheus shall be unbound from Caucasus, if 
by any means he may take pity on us and on 
our children, and again bring us down from 
heaven that fire which is the spirit of truth, that 
w^e may see facts as they are. For which if he 
were to ask Zeus humbly and filially, I cannot 
believe that He would refuse it. And indeed, 
I think that the poets, as is their custom, corrupt 
the minds of young men by telling them that 
Zeus chained Prometheus to Caucasus for his 
theft; seeing that it befits such a ruler, as I 
take the Father of Gods and men to be, to know 
that liis subjects can only do well by means of 
his bounty, and therefore to bestow it freely, as 
the kings of Persia do, on all who are willing to 
use it in the Service of their sovereign." 



PHAETHON. 47 

" So then," said Alcibiades laughing, " tili 
Prometheus be unbound from Caucasus, we who 
have lost, as you seem to hint, this heavenly 
fire, must needs go on upon our own subjective 
opinions, haAdng nothing better to which to 
trust. Truly, thou sophist, thy conclusion seems 
to nie after all not to difFer much from that of 
Protagoras." 

S. " Ah, dear boy ! know you not that to 
those who have been initiated, and as they say 
in the mysteries, twice born, Prometheus is al- 
ways unbound, and stands ready to assist them ; 
while to those who are self-willed and conceited 
of their own opinions, he is removed to an 
inaccessible distance, and chained in icy fetters 
on untrodden mountain-peaks, where the vulture 
ever devours his fair heart, which sympathises 
continually with the foUies and the sorrows of 
mankind? Of what punishment, then, must 
not those be worthy, who by their own w^ilful- 
ness and self-confidence bind again to Caucasus 
the fair Titan, the friend of men ?" 

" By Apollo !" said Alcibiades, " this lan- 
guage is more fit for the tripod in Delphos, than 
for the Bema in the Pnyx. So fare theo well, 
thou Pythoness ! I must go and con over my 



48 niAETHON. 

oration, at least if thy propliesying has not 
altogetlier acldled my tlioughts." 

But I, as soon as Alcibiades was gone, for I 
was ashamed to speak before, turning to Socrates 
Said to hinij all but weepiiig : — 

" Oh SocrateS;, wliat cruel w^ords are these 
which you have spoken ? Are you not ashamed 
to talk thus contemptuonsly to one like me, 
even though he be younger and less cunning in 
argument than yourself; knowing as you do, 
how, when I might have grown rieh in niy 
native city of Ilhodes, and marrying there, 
as my fether purposed, a wealthy merchant's 
heiress, so have passed my life dehcately, receiv- 
ing the profits of many ships and warehouses, 
I yet preferrcd Truth beyond riches ; and 
leaving my father's house, came to Athens in 
search of wisdom, dissipating my patrimony 
upon one sophist after another, listening greedily 
to Ilippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and Pro- 
tagoras, and last of all to you, hard-hearted man 
that you are ? For from my youth I loved and 
longcd after nothing so much as Truth, whatso- 
ever it may be ; thinking nothing so noble as 
to know that which is Right, and knowing it, 
to do it. And that loiiging, or love of niine, 
which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by 



PHAETHON. 49 

the spirit of truth, 1 cherished as the fairest and 
most divine possession, and that for wliich alone 
it was worth wliile to live. For it seemed to me, 
that eA^en if in my search I never attained to 
truth, still it were better to die seeking, than 
not to seek ; and that exen if acting by what 
I considered to l)e the spirit of trnth, and doing 
honestly in every case that which seemed right, 
I should often, acting on a false conviction, 
oifend in ignorance against the absolute right- 
eousness of the Gods, yet that such an offence 
was deserving, if not of praise for its sincerity, 
yet at least of pity and forgiveness ; but by no 
means to be classed, as you class it, with the 
appetites of brutcs ; much less to be threatened, 
as you threaten it, with infinite and eternal 
misery by I know not what necessary laws 
of Zeus, and to be put off at last with sonie 
myth or other about Prometheus. Surely your 
-mother bare you a scoffer and pitiless, Socrates, 
and not, as you boast, a man-midwife fit for fair 
youths." 

Then, smiling sweetly, "Dear boy," said 
he, '''were I such as you fancy, how should 
I be here now, discoursing with you concerning 
truth, instead of conning my speech for the 
Pnyx, like Alcibiades, that I may become a 
5 



50 PHAETHON. 

demagogue, deceiving the mob with flatteiy, 
and win for myself houses, and Lands, and gold, 
and slave-giiis, and fame, and power, even to 
a tyranny itself ? For in tliis way I miglit have 
made my tongue a profitable member of my 
body : but now, being hurried up and down 
in barren places, like one mad of love, froni my 
longing after fair youtlis, I waste my speecli on 
them; receiving, as is the wont of trne lovers, 
only curses and ingratitude from their arrogance. 
But teil me, tliou prond Adonis — This spirit 
of truth in thee, w^hich tliou thouglitest, and 
rightly, thy most noble possession — did it desire 
truth, or not ?" 

P. " But, Socrates, I told you that very thing, 
and Said that it was a longing after truth, which 
I could not restrain or disobey." 

S. " Teil me now, does one long for that 
which one possesses, or for that which one tloes 
not possess ?" 

P. '^ For that which one does not possess." 

S. ^' And is one in love with that which is 
one seif, or with that which is not T 

P. "With that which is not oneself, thou 
mocker. V/e are not all, surely, like Nar- 
cissus : 

S. " No, by the dog ! not quite all. But see 



PIIAETHON. 51 

now : it appears that when any one is in love 
with a thing,- and longs for it, as thoii dielst 
for trutli, it must be something which is not 
liimself, and whicli he does not possess ?" 

P. "True." 

S. " You, then, while you were loving facts 
as tliey are, and longing to see them as they 
are, yet did not possess that which you longed 
for?" 

P. '^ True, indeed ; eise why should I have 
been driven forth by the anger of the gods, like 
Bellerophon, to pace the Aleian piain, eating my 
own soul, if I had possessed that for which 
I longed ?" 

S. " Well Said, dear boy. But see again. 
This truth which you loved, and which was 
not yourself or part of yourself, was certainly 
also nothing of your own making ? — Though 
they say that Pygniahon was enamored of the 
statue which he hiniself had carved." 

P. '* But he w^as miserable, Socrates, tili the 
statue becanie alive." 

S. ^' They say so : but what has that to do 
with the argument ?" 

P. " I know not. But it seems to me 
horrible, as it did to Pygmalion, to be ena- 
moured of anything which cannot return your 



52 PIIAETIION. 

love, but is, as it were, yoiir puppet. Should 
wo not think it a sliamef ul tliiiig, if a mistress 
were to be enamoured of oiie of lier own 
slaves ?" 

8. ^* Wo should ; and tliat, I suppose, because 
the slave would have no free clioice wlietlier 
to refiise or to retnrn bis niistress's lo^^e ; bnt 
would be compelled, being a slave, to subnüt 
to her, even if she were old, or ugly, or hateful 
to him ?" 

P. "Of course." 

S. "And should we not say, Phaethon, that 
there was no true enjoyment in such love, even 
on the part of the mistress ; nay, that it was 
not worthy of the name of love at all, but 
was merely something base, such as happens 
to animals ?" 

P. " We should say so rightly." 

S. " Teil me, then, Phaethon, — for a stränge 
doubt has entered my mind on account of your 
words — this truth of which you were en- 
amoured, seems, from what has been agreed, 
not to be a part of yourself, nor a creation 
of your own, like Pygmalions statue : — how 
then has it not happened to you to be e^en 
more miserable than Pygmalion tili you were 
sure that truth loved you in return ? — and, 



PHAETHON. 53 

moreover, tili you were siire that tmtli liad 
free clioice as to wlietlier it sliould return or 
refuse your love ? For, otherwise, you would be 
in danger of being found sufFering the same 
base passion as a mistress enamoured of a slave 
wlio cannot resist her." 

P. " I am puzzled, Socrates." 

S. " Shall we ratlier say, then, that you 
were enamoured, not of truth itself, but of the 
spirit of truth ? For we have been all along 
defining truth to be ^facts as they are/ have 
we not?" 

P. " We have." 

S. " But there are many facts as they are, 
whereof to be enamoured would be base, for 
they cannot return your love. As, for instance 
that one and one make tAvo, or that a horse has 
four legs. With respect to such facts, you 
would be, would you not, in the same position 
as a mistress tow^ards her slave ?" 

P. " Certainly. It seems, then, better to 
assume the other alternative." 

S. ''It does. But does it not follow, that 
when you were enamoured of this spirit, you 
did not possess it ?" 

P. '^ I fear so, by the argument." 

S. " And I fear, too, that we agreed that he 

• 5^ 



54 PHAETHON. 

only wlio possessecl the spirit of triitli saw facts 
as they are ; for that was iiivolvecl in our defini- 
tioii of tlie spirit of truth." 

P. " Biit^ Socrates, I knew, at least, that one 
and one made two, and that a horse had four legs. 
I mnst then have seen some facts as they are." 

S. " Donbtless, fair boy ; but not all." 

P. " I do not pretend to that." 

S. " Bnt if you had possessed the spirit of 
truth, you would have seen all facts whatsoever 
as they are. For he who possesses a thing can 
surely employ it freely for all purposes whicli are 
not contrary to the nature ofthat thing; can 
he not ?" 

P. "Of course he can. But if I did not 
possess the spirit of truth, how could I scc any 
truth whatsoever ?" 

S. " Suppose, dear boy, that instead of your 
possessing it, it were possible for it to possess 
you : and possessing you, to show you as much 
of itself, or as little, as it might choose, and 
concerning such things only as it might choose : 
would not that explain the dilemma ?" 

P. " It would assuredly," 

S. " Let US see, then, whether this spirit of 
truth naay not be something whicli is capable of 
possessing you, and employing you, rather than 



PHAETHON. 55 

of being possessed and einployed by you. To 
me, indeed, this spirit seems likely to be some 
demon or deity, and that one of the greatest." 

P. "Whythen?" 

S. " Can lifeless and material things see ?" 

P. " Certainly not ; only live ones." 

S. " This spirit, then, seems to be living ; for 
it sees things as they are." 

P. "Yes." 

S. "And it is also intellectual ; for intel- 
lectual facts can be only seen by an intellectual 
being." 

P. "True." 

S. "And also moral; for moral facts cnn 
only be seen by a moral being." 

P. " Trne also." 

S. " Bat this spirit is evidently not a man ; 
it remains, therefore, that it mnst be some de- 
mon." 

P. " But why one of the greatest ?" 

S. " Teil nie, Phaethon, is not God to be 
numbered among facts as they are ?" 

P. "Assuredly; for He is before all others, 
and more eternal and absolute than all." 

S. " Then this spirit of truth must also be 
able to see God as He is." 

P. " It is probable." 



56 PHAETHON. 

S. "And certain, if, as we agreed, it be the 
veiy spirit which sees all facts whatsoever as 
they are. Now teil me, can the less see the 
greater as it is ?" 

P. " I thmk not ; for an animal cannot see a 
man as he is, hut only that part of him in which 
he is like an animal, namely, his outward figure 
and his animal passions ; but not his moral 
sense or reason, for of them it has itself no 
share." 

S. " True ; and in Hke wise, a man of less 
intellect could not see a man of greater intellect 
than himself, as he is, but only a part of his 
intellect." 

P. "Certainly." 

S. " And does not the same thing follow from 
what we said just now, that God's conceptions 
of Himself must be the only perfect conceptions 
of Him ? For if any being could see God as 
He is, the same would be able to conceive of 
Him as He is ; which we agreed was impossible." 

P. "True." 

S. " Then, surely, this spirit which sees God 
as He is, must be equal witli God." 

P. " It seems probable ; but none is equal to 
God except Himself." 

S. " Most true, Phaethon. But what shall 



PHAETIION. 57 

we say now, but tliat this spirit of triith, wliereof 
thou hast beeil enamoured, is, accordiDg to tlie 
argument, none otlier than Zeus, who alone 
compreliends all tliings, and sees them as they 
are, because He alone has given to each its 
in ward and necessaiy laws ?" 

P. "But, Soerates, there seems something 
iinpious in tlie thought." 

S. " Impious, truly, if we held that this spirit 
of truth w^as a part of your own seif But w^e 
agreed that it was not a part of you, but some- 
thing utterly independent of you." 

P. " Noble would the news be, Socrates, were 
it true ; yet it seems to nie beyond belief." 

8. " Did we not prove just now concerning 
Zeus, that all mistakes concerning Ilim were 
certain to be mistakes of defect ?" 

P. " We did, indeed." 

S. " IIow^ do you know, then, that you have 
not fallen iiito some such error, and have sus- 
pected Zeus to be less condescending towards 
you than He really is ?" 

P. " Would that it were so ! But I fear it is 
too fair a liope." 

S. " Do I seeni to thee now, dear boy, more 
insolent and unfeeling than Protagoras, when he 
tried to turn thee away from the scarch after 



58 PHAETHON. , 

absolute truth, by saying sopliistically that it 
was an attempt of the Titans to scale lieaven, 
and bade thee be content witli asserting sliame- 
lessly and brutishly tliine own subjective 
opinions? For I do not bid thee scale the 
throne of Zeus, into whose presence none could 
arrive, as it seems to me, unless He himself 
willed it ; but to beheve that He has given thee 
from thy childhood a glimpse of his own excel- 
lence, that so, thy heart, conjecturing, as in the 
case of a veiled statue, from one part the beauty 
of the rest, might beconie enamoured thereof, 
and long for that sight of Büni which is the 
highest and only good, that so his splendor may 
give thee light to see facts as they are." 

P. " Oh, Socrates ! and how is this blessed- 
ness to be attained ?" 

S. " Even as, the myths relate, the Nymphs 
obtained the embraces of the Gods ; by pleasing 
Him and obeying Hirn in all things, Hfting uj:) 
daily pure hands and a thankful heart, if by any 
means He may condescend to purge thine eyes, 
that thou mayest see clearly, and without those 
motes, and specks, and distortions of thine own 
organ of vision, which flit before the eyeballs of 
those who have been drunk over night, and 
which are called by sophists subjective truth 3 



PHxiETHON. 59 

watching everywhere anxiously and reverently 
for those glimpses of his beauty, whicli He will 
vouchsafe to tliee more and more as thon provest 
thyself wortliy of tliem, and will reward thy love 
by making thee more and more partaker of his 
own spirit of truth ; whereby seeing facts as they 
are, tliou wilt see Hirn wlio has made them 
according to liis own ideas, that they may be a 
mirror of his unspeakable splendor. Is not 
this a fairer hope for thee, Phaethon, than 
that which Protagoras held out to thee, — that 
neither seeing Zeus, nor seeing facts as they are, 
nor affirming any truth whatsoever, nor depend- 
ing for thy knowledge on any one but thine own 
ignorant seif, thou mightest nevertheless be so 
fortunate as to escape punishment; not knowing, 
as it seems to nie, that such a state of ignorance 
and blindfold rashness, exen if Tartarus were a 
dream of the poets or the priests, is in itself the 
most fearful of punishments ?" 

P. " It is, indeed, my dear Socrates. Yet 
what are we to say of those who, sincerely loving 
and longing after knowledge, yet arrive at false 
conclusions, which are proved to be false by con- 
trdicting each other?" 

S. " We are to say, Phaethon, that they have 
not loved knowledge enough to desire utterly to 



60 PHAETHON. 

See facts as they are, but only to see them as 
they woiilcl wish them to be ; and loviiig them- 
selves rather tlian Zeus, have wished to remodel 
in some things or other bis universe, according 
to their own subjective opinions. By this, or by 
some other act of self-will, or self-conceit, or self- 
dependence, they have compelled Zeus, not, as I 
think, Avithout pity and kmdness to them, to 
withdraw from them in some degree the sight of 
bis OAvn beauty. We must, therefore, I fear, 
liken them to Acharis, the painter of Lemnos, 
wbo, intending to represent Phoebus, painted 
from a minor a copy of bis own defects and de- 
formities ; or perhaps to that Nymph, who find- 
ing herseif beloved by Phoebus, instead of reve- 
rentlyand silently returning the affection,boasted 
of it to all her neighbors, as a token of her 
own beauty, and despised the God ; so that he, 
being angry, changed her into a chattering mag- 
pie ; or again to Arachne, who having been taught 
the art of weaving by Athene, pretended to com- 
pete w4th her own instructress, and being meta- 
morphosed by her into a spider, was condemned, 
like the sophists, to spin out of her own entrails 
endless ugiy w^ebs, which are destroyed, as soon 
as finished, by every slave-girl's broom." 

P. " But shall we despise and hate such, 
Socrates?" 



PHAETIION. 61 

S. ^' No^ dearest boy, wc will rather pity and 
instruct tlieni lovingly; remembering always 
that we shall become such as they tlie moment 
we begiii to fancy that truth is our own posses- 
sion, aiid not the very beauty of Zeus Hmiself, 
which lle shows to those whoni He will, and 
in such measure as He finds them worthy to 
behold. But to nie, considering how great must 
be the condescension of Zeus in unveiling to 
any man, even the worthiest, the least portion of 
his own loveliness, there has come at times a 
sort of dream, that the divine splendor will at 
last pierce through and illnmine all dark sonls, 
exen in the house of Hades, shovvdng them, as by 
a great sunrise, both what they themselves, and 
what all other things are, really and in the sight 
of Zeus ; which if it happened, even to Ixion, I 
believe that his wheel would stop, and his fetters 
drop off of themselves, and that he Avould return 
freely to the upper air, for as long as he himself 
might choose." 

Just then the people began to throng into the 
Pnyx ; and we took our places with the rest to 
hear the business of the day, after Socrates had 
privately uttered this prayer : — 

" Zeu, give to nie and to all who shall coun- 
sel here this day, that spirit of truth by which 
6 



62 PHÄETHON. 

we may beliold tliat whereof we deliberatCj as it 
is in Thj sight !" 



'"^As I expectecl/' said Templeton, witli a 
smile, as I folded up my manuscript. " My 
friend the parson could not demolish the poor 
Professors bad logic without a little professional 
touch by way of finish." 

" What do you mean ?' 

" Oh — never mind. Only I owe you little 
thanks for sweeping away any one of my lingering 
sympathies with Mr. Windrusli, if all you can 
ofFer nie instead is the confounded old nostrum 
of religion over again." 

" Heyday, friend ! What next ?" 

" Really, my dear fellow, I beg your pardon. 
I forgot that I was speaking to a clergyman." 

" Pray don't beg my pardon on that ground. 
If what you say be right, a clergyman aboA^e 
all otliers ought to hear it; and if it be wrong, 
and a Symptom of spiritual disease, he ought to 
hear it all the niore. But I cannot teil whether 
you are right or wrong, tili I know what you 
mean by religion ; for there is a great deal of 



PIIAETIION. 63 

very truly confounded and confoimding religion 
abroad in tlie woiid just now, as tliere has been 
in all ages ; and perhaps you may be allnding to 
that." 

Templeton sat silent for a few minutes, play- 
ing with the tackle in bis fly-book, and tlien 
murmnred to himself tlie well-known lines of 
Lucretius : — 

" 'Humana ante oculos focde cum vita jacret 
In terris oppressa gravi sub Relligione 
Qua3 Caput a cocli regionibus ostendebat, 
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans : — ' 

^^ . . . . Tliere ! — blasphemous, reprobate fellow, 
am I not ?" 

" On the contrary/' I said, " I think that in 
the sense in which Lucretius intended that the 
lines should be taken, they contain a great deal 
of truth. He had seen the basest and foulest 
crimes spring from that which he calls Relligio, 
and he had a füll right to state that fact. I am 
not aware that one blasphemes the CathoHc and 
Apostohc Faith by saying that the devilries of 
the Spanish Inquisition were the dir e et ofTspring 
of that ^religious sentiment' which Mr. Wind- 
rush's school — though they are at all events 
right in saying that its source is in man himself, 
and not in the ' regionibus Coeli' — are now glo- 



64 PHAETHON. 

rifying, as something which enables man to save 
his own soiü without the interference of ' The 
Deity/ — mcleed, whether ^ The Deity' chooses or 
not." 

"Do leave those poor Emersonians alone for 
a few minutes, and teil me how you can recon- 
cile what you have just said with your own 
dialogue ?" 

"Whynot?" 

"Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that 
the Gods do not trouble themselves with mortals, 
while you have been asserting that ' The Deity' 
troubles himself even wdth the souls of heathens ?" 

" Certainly. But that is quite a distinct mat- 
ter from his dislike of what he calls ' Eclligio.' 
In that dislike I can sympathize fully : but on 
his method of escape Mr. Windrush will jDro- 
bably look with more complaisance than I do, 
who call it by the ugly name of Atheism." 

" Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, 
if you knew all. So ^ve had better say no more 
about it." 

"A most cuidous speech, certainly, to make 
to a parson, or soul-curer by profession !" 

" Why, what on earth lia^^e you to do but to 
abhor and flee me?" asked he, v/ith a laugh, 
though by no means a merry onc. 



PHAETHON. 65 

" Would your liaving a headache be a reason 
for the medical man's riinniiig awaj from you, 
or Coming to visit you ?" 

" All, but tliis, you know, is my ' fault/ and 
my ^ crime/ and my 'sin.' Eh?" and he laughed 
again. 

" Would the doctor visit you the less, because 
it was your own fault that your head ached ?" 

" Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith 
in his powers of curing, and had a great hank- 
ering after unaccredited liomoeopathies, hke Mr. 
AVindrush's ; would not that be a fair cause for 
interdiction from fire and water, sacraments and 
Christian burial ?" 

'*• Come, come, Templeton," I said ; " you 
shall not thus jest away serious thoughts with 
an old friend. I know you are ill at ease. Why 
not talk over the matter with nie fairly and so- 
berly ? How do you know tili you liave tried, 
whether I can help you or not ?" 

" Because I know that your arguments will 
have. no force with nie ; tliey will deniand of 
me, or assume in nie, certain faculties, senti- 
ments, notions, experiences — call them wliat you 
like — I am beginning to suspect sometimes with 
Cabanis that they are ^ a product of the small 
intestines' — whicli I never have had, and never 



66 PHAETIION. 

could make myself have, and now don't care 
whether I have tliem or not." 

" On niy honour, I will address you only as 
wliat you are, and know yourself to be. But 
wliat are these faculties, so strangely beyond 
my friend Templeton's reach ? He nsed to be 
distinguished at College for a very clear head, 
and a very kind lieart, and the nicest sense of 
honour wliich I ever saw in living man ; and I 
have not heard that tliey have failed him since 
he became Templeton of Templeton. And as 
for liis Churchmanship, wqre not the county 
papers ringing last month with the accounts of 
the beautifnl new church which he had built, 
and the stained glass which he brought from 
Bekium, and the marble fönt which he brouoht 
from Italy ; and how he had even given for an 
altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of Tem- 
pleton House ?" 

" Effeminate picture !" he said. " It was part 
and parcel of the idea. . . ." 

Before I could ask him what he meant^ he 
looked up suddenly at nie, witli deep sadness on 
his usually nonchalant face. 

" Well, my dear fellow^, I suppose I must teil 
you all, as I have told you so much without 
your shaking the dust oft' your feet against me, 



PHAETIION. 67 

and Consulting Bradsliaw for tlie earliest train 
to Shrewsbmy. You knew my dear mother ?" 

'' I did. The best of women." 

" The best of women, and the best of mothers. 
But, if you recoUect, she was a great Low-church 
Saint." 

"Why ^but'? IIow does that derogate in 
any wise from her excellence ?" 

" Not from her excellence ; God forbid ! or 
from the excellence of the people of her own 
party, whom she used to have round her, and 
who were, some of them, I do belle ve, as really 
earnest, and pious, and charitable, and all that, 
as human beings could be. But it did take away 
very much indeed from her influence on me." 

" Surely she did not neglect to teach you." 

'^ It is a stränge thing to say, but she rather 
taught me too much. I don't deny that it may 
have been my own fault. I don't blame her, or 
any one. But you know what I was at coUege — 
no worse than other men, I dare say ; but no 
better. I had no reason for being better." 

" No reason ? Surely she gave you reasons." 

" There — you have touched the ailing nerve 
now. The reasons were what you would call 
paralogisms. They had no more to do with me 
than those trout." 



68 PHAETIION. 

" Yoii mistake, friend, yoii mistake, indeed," 
Said I. 

" I don't mistake at all about this ; that 
whether or not the reasons in themselves had 
to do with nie, the way in whicli she put them 
made them practically so much Hebrew. She 
demanded of me, as the only groimds on which 
I Avas to consider myself safe from hell, certain 
fears and hopes which I did not feel, and expe- 
riences which I did not experience ; and it was 
my fault, and a sign of my being in a wrong 
State — to use no harder term — that I did not 
feel them; and yet it was only God's grace 
which could make me feel them : and so I grew 
up with a dark secret notion that I w^as a very 
bad boy : but that it was God's fault and not 
mine that I was so." 

" You w^ere ripe indeed then," said I sadly, 
" like hundreds more, for Professor Windrush's 
teaching." 

" I will come to that presently. But in the 
meantime, — was it my fault ? I Avas never what 
you call a deA^out person. My ' organ of A' enera- 
tion,' as the phrenologist Avould say, Avas ncA^er 
very large. I AA^as a shrcAv dashing boy, en- 
joying life to the finger-tips, and enjo}ing aboA^e 
all, I Avill say, pleasing my mother in every Avay, 



PIIAETIION. G9 

except in the und erstand ing what slie told me, — 
and what I folt I could not nnderstand. But as 
I grew older, and Avatched her, and the men 
round her, I began to suspect that rehgion and 
cfFenihiacy had a good deal to do with each other. 
For the wonien, whatsoever their temperaments, 
or even theh^ tastes might he, took to this to me 
incomprehensible rehgion natnrally and instinc- 
tively : while the very few men who were in their 
chque were — I don't deny some of them w^ere 
good men enough — if they had been men at all : 
if they had been w^ell-read, or well-bred, or 
gallant, or clear-headed, or liberal-minded or, 
in short, anything but the silky, smooth-tongued 
hunt-the-slippers nine out of ten of them were. 
I recollect w^ell asking my mother once, whether 
there would not be five times more women than 
men in heaA^en — and her answering me sadly 
and seriously, that she feared there w^ould be. 
And in the meantime she brought me up to 
pray and hope that I might some day be 

converted, and become a child of God 

And one could not help wdshing to enjoy one- 
self as mucli as possible before that event 
happened." 

" Before that event happened, my dear fellow ? 
Pardon me, but your tone is some what irreverent." 



70 PHAETHON. 

" Very likely. I had no reason put before me 
for regarding such a cliange as anjthing but 
an unpleasant doom, which would cut me off, or 
ought to do so, from field sports, from poetiy, 
from art, from science, from politicSj — for Chris- 
tians, I was told, had nothing to do with the 
politics of this world, — from man and all nian's 
civilization in short ; and leave to me, as the only 
two lawful indulgences, those of living in a good 
house, and begetting a family of children." 

" And did you throw off the old Creeds for the 
sake of the civilization which you fancied that 
they forbid ?" 

"No ... I am a Churchman, you know; 
principally on political grounds, or from custom, 
or from — the devil knows what, perhaps — I do- 
not." 

" Probably it is God, and not the devil, who 
knows why, Templeton." 

" Be it so . . . Frightful as it is to have to say 
it . . . I do not so much care ... I suppose it is 
all right : if it is not, it will all come right at last. 
And in the meantime, I compromise, like the 
rest of the world ; and hear Jane making the 
children every week-day pray that they may 
become God's children, and then teaching them 
every Sunday evening the Catechism, which says 



PHAETHON. 71 

that tliey are so alreacly. I don't understand it. 

. . I suppose if it was important, one would 
understand it. One knows right from wrong, 
you know, and other fimdamentals. If that were 
necessary, one would know that too." 

" But can you submit quietly to such a bare- 
faced contradiction ?" 

" I ? I am only a piain country squire. Of 
course I should call such dealing with an act 
of paiiiament a lie and a sham. . . . But about 
these things, I fancy, the women know best. 
Jane is ten thousand times as good as I am. . . 
you don't know half her worth. . . . And I 
haven t the heart to contradict her — nor the 
right either ; for I have no reasons to give her ; 
no faith to Substitute for hers." 

" Our friend, the High-church curate, could 
have given you a few piain reasons, I should 
think." 

" Of course he could. And I believe in my 
heart the man is in the right in calling Jane 
WTong. He has honesty and common sense on 
his side, just as he has wdien he calls the present 
State of Convocation, in the face of that prayer 
for God's Spirit on its deliberations, a blasphe- 
mous lie and sham. Of course it is. Any ensign 
in a marching regiment could teil us that, from 



72 PHAETHON. 

liis mere sense of soldier's lionour. But then — 
if she is wrong, is he right ? How do I know ? 
I want reasons : he gives ine historic authorities." 

" And veiy good thmgs too ; for they arc 
fau* pha3nomena for induction." 

" But how will proving to me that certain 
people once thought a thmg right, prove to me 
that it is right ? Good people think differently 
every day . Good people have thought differently 
about those very matters in every age. I want 
some proof which will coincide with the little 
whicli I do know about science and philosophy. 
They must fight out tlieir own battle, if they 
choose to fight it on mere authority. If one 
could but have the implicit faith of a ehild, it 
would be all very well, but one can't. If one 
has once been fool enough to think about these 
things, one must have reasons, or something 
better than mere ipse dixUs^ or one can't believe 
them. I should be glad enough to believe ; — 
Do you suppose that I don't envy poor dear Jane 
from morning to night ?" — but I can't. And so. . ." 

"And so what?" asked I. 

" And so, I believe, I am growing to have no 
religion at all, and no Substitute for it either ; 
for I feel I have no ground or reason for admi- 
ring or working out any subject. I have tired 



PHAETHON. 73 

of philosophy. — Perliaps it's all wrong — at least 
I can't see what it has to do with God, and 
Christianity, and all which, if it is true, must be 
more important tlian anything eise. I have 
tired of art for the same reason, How can I be 
anything but a wretched dilettante, when I 
have no principles to ground my criticism on, 
beyond bosh about ' The Beautiful ?' I did 
pluck up heart and read Mr. Ruskin's books 
greedily when they came out, because I heard 
he was a good Christian. But I feil upon a 
little tract of his, ^ Notes on Sheepfolds/ and 
gave him up again, when I found that he had a 
leaning to that ' Clapham sect.' I have droj^ped 
politics : for I have no reason, no ground, 
no principle in them, but expediency. When 
they asked me this summer to represent 
the interests of the County in Parliament, I 
asked them how they came to make such a 
mistake as to fancy that I knew what was their 
interest, or any one eise's? I am becoming 
more and more of an animal; — fragmentary, 
inconsistent, seeing to the root of nothing, unable 
to unite things in my own mind. I just do the 
duty which lies nearest, and looks simplest. I 
try to make the boys groAV up plucky and 
knowing — though what's the use of it? They 
7 



74 PHAETHON. 

will go to College with even less principles tlian 
I had, and will get into proportionably worse 
scrapes. I expect to be ruined hj their debts 
before I die. And for the rest, I read nothing 
but the Edinburgh and the Agricultural Gazette. 
My talk is of buUocks. I just know right from 
wrong enough to see that the farms are in good 
Order, pay my labourers living wages, keep the 
old people out of the workhouse, and see that 
my cottages and schools are all right; for I 
suppose I was put here for some purpose of that 
kind — though what it is, I can't very clearly 
dehne .... And there's an end of my long 
story." 

" Not quite an animal yet, it seems ?" said I 
with a smile, half to hide my own sadness at a set 
of experiences which are, alas ! aheady far too 
common, and will soon be more common still. 

"Nearer it than you fancy. I am getting 
fonder and fonder of a good dinner and a second 
bettle of claret ; — about their meaning there is no 
mistake. And my principal reason for taking 
the hounds tAvo years ago, was, I do belle ve, to 
have something to do in the winter which re- 
qulred no thought, and to have an excuse for 
falling asleep after dinner, instead of arguing 
with Jane about her scurrillous rehgious news- 



PHAETHON. 75 



papers. . . . There is a great gulf opening, I see, 
between me and her. . . And as I can't bridge 
it over, I may as well forget it. Pah ! I am 
boring yoii, and over-talkmg myself. Have a 
cigar, and let us say no niore about it. There 
is more here, old fellow, than you will eure by 
doses of Socratic Dialectics." 

" I am not so sure of that," I repHed. " On 
the contrary, I should recommend you in your 
present state of mind to look out your old Plato 
as quickly as possible, and see if he and his 
master Socrates cannot give you, if not alto- 
gether a Solution for your puzzle, at least a 
method whereby you may solve it yourself. But 
teil me first — what has all this to do with your 
evident sympathy for a man so unlike yourself 
/IS Professor Windrush ?" 

" Perhaps I feel for him principally because 
he has broken loose from it all in desperation, 
just as I have. But to teil you the truth, I 
have been reading more than one book of his 
school latel}^ ; and, as I said, I owe you no 
thanks for demolishing the little comfort which 
I seemed to find in them." 

" And what was that then ?" 

" Why — in the first place, you can t deny that 
however incoherent they may be, they do say a 



76 PHAETHON. 

great many clever Ihings, and noble things too, 
about man^ and society, and art, and nature." 

"JSTo doubt of it." 

" And moreover, they seem to connect all they 
say with — witli — I snppose you will langli at me 
— with God, and spiritual truths, and eternal 
Divine laws ; in short, to consecrate common 
matters in that very w^ay, which I could not find 
in my poor mother's teaching." 

"No doubt of that either. And therein is 
one real value of them, as protests in behalf of 
something nobler and more unselfish than the 
mere doUar-getting spirit of their country." 

" Well, then, can you not see how pleasant it 
was to me, to find some one who would give me 
a peep into the unseen world, wdthout requiring 
as an entrance-fee any religious emotions and 
experiences ? Here I had been for years shut 
out; told that I had no business with anything 
eternal, and pure, and noble, and good ; that to 
all intents and purposes I was nothing better 
than a very cunning animal who could be damned ; 
because I was still ^carnal,' and had not been 
through all Jane's mysterious sorrows and joys. 
And it was really good news to me to hear that 
they were not required after all, and that all I 
need do was to be a good man, and leave devo- 



PHAETHON. 77 

tion to those wlio were inclined to it by tempera- 
iiient." 

" Not to be a good man," said I, '" but only 
a good specimen of some sort of man. That, I 
think, would be tlie outcome of Emerson's ' E-e- 
presentative Men/ or of those most tragic 
' Memoirs of Margaret Füller Ossoli.' " 

"How then, hair-splitter ? What is tlie 
mighty difference ?" 

" Would you call Dick Turpin a good man, 
because he was a good highwayman ?" 

" What now ?" 

" That he would be an excellent representa- 
tive man of his class ; and therefore, on Mr. 
Emerson's grounds, a fit subject for a laudatory 
lecture." 

" I hate reductiones ad absurdum. Let Turpin 
take care of himself. I suppose I do not belong 
to such a very bad sort of men, but that it may 
be worth my while to become a good specimen 

of itr 

" Certainly not ; only I think, contrary to 
Mr. Emerson's opinion, that you will not become 
even that, unless you first become something 
better still, namely, a good man." 

" There you are too refined for me. But can 
you not understand now, the causes of my 

7* 



78 PHAETHON, 

sympathy even with Windrusli and his ' spirit 
of truth?" 

" I can, and tliose of many more. It seems 
that you thouglit you found in that school a 
wider creed tlian the one to which you had been 
accustomed ?" 

" There was a more comprehensive view of 
humanity about them, and that pleased me." 

" Doubtless, one can be easily comprehensive, 
if one comprehends good and bad, true and 
false, under one category, by denying the abso- 
lute existence of either goodness or badness, 
truth or falsehood. But let the view be as com- 
prehensive as it will, I am afraid that the creed 
founded thereon will not be very comprehen- 
sive." 

" Why thcn ?" 

" Because it will comprehend so few people ; 
fewer, evcn, than the sect of those who will be- 
lieve with Mr. Emerson, that Bacon, like The 
Lord, is one of the ' heroes who have become 
bores at last' by being too much obeyed, and 
that Harvey and Newton made their discoveries 
by the ' Aristotelian method.' The sect of those 
who believe that there is no absolute right and 
wrong, no absolute truth external to himself, 
discoverable by man, will, it seems to me, be a 



PHAETHON. 79 

very narrow one to the end of time ; owing to a 
certain primeval superstition of our race, who, 
even in barbarous countries have always been 
Platonists enougli to have some sort of instinct 
and hope that there was a right and a wrong, 
and truths independent of their own sentiments 
and faculties. So that, though this school may 
enable you to fancy that you understand Lady 
Jane somewhat more, by the snnple expedient 
of putting on her religious experiences an arbi- 
trary Interpretation of your own, which she 
would indignantly and justly deny, it will 
enable her to understand you all the less, and 
widen the gulf between you immeasurably." 

" You are severe." 

" I only wish you to face one result of a 
theory, which while it pretends to offer the most 
comprehensive liberahty, will be found to lead in 
practice to the most narrow and sectarian Epi- 
curism for a cultivated few. But for the many, 
struggling with the innate consciousness of evil, 
in them and around them, — an instinctive con- 
sciousness which no argumentation about ' evil 
being a lower form of good/ will ever explain 
away to those who ^ grind among the iron facts 
of lifo, and have no time for self-deception' — 
what good news for them is there in Mr. 



80 PHAETHON. 

Emerson's cosy and tolerant Epicurism ? They 
cry for deliverance from their natures ; they know 
that they are not that which they were intended 
to be, because they foUow their natures ; and he 
answers theni with, ' Follow your natures, and 
be that which you were intended to be.' You 
began this argument by stipulating that I should 
argue with you simply as a man. Does Mr. 
Emerson's argument look like doing that, or only 
arguing as with an individual of that kind of 
man, or rather animal, to which some iron Fate 
has compelled you to belong ?" 

" But, I say, these books have made me a 
better man." 

" I do not doubt it. An earnest cultivated 
man, speaking his whole mind to an earnest 
cultivated man, will hardly fall of telling him 
something he did not know before. But if you 
had not been a cultivated man, Templeton, a 
man with few sorrows, and few trials, and fcw 
unsatisfied desires — if you had been the village 
shopkeeper, with his bad debts, and his temp- 
tations to make those who can, pay for those 
who cannot, — ^if you had been one of your owli 
labourers, environed with the struggle for daily 
bread, and the alehouse, and hungry children, 
and a sick wife, and a duU taste, and a duller 



PIIAETHON. 81 

head, — in short, if you had been a man such as 
nine out of ten are, — wliat Avould his scliool have 
taught you tlien ? You Avant some trutlis wliicli 
are common to men as men, which will help and 
teach them, let their temperament or their circum- 
stances be what they will — do you not ? If you 
do not, your complaint of Lady Jane's exclusive 
Creed is a mere selfish competition on your part, 
between a Creed wliicli w^ill fit her peculiarities, 
and a Creed which will fit your peculiarities. 
Do you not see tliat ?" 

" I do — go 011." 

" Then I say you will not find tliat in Professor 
Windrush's school. I say you will find it in 
Lady Jane's Creed." 

"What? In the very Creed which excludes 
nie : 

" Whether that Creed excludes you or not is 
a question of the true meaning of its words. 
And that again is a question of Dialectics. I say 
it includes you and all mankind." 

" You must mistake her doctrineSj then." 

" I do not, I assure you. I know what they 
are ; and I know, also, the mis-reading of them to 
which vour dear mother's school has accustomed 
her, and which has taught her that tliese Creeds 
only belong to the few wdio have discovered their 



82 PHAETHON. 

own share in them. But whether the Creecls 
really do that or not, — wliether Lady Jane does 
not implicitly confess that they do not by her 
own words and deeds of every day, that, I say, 
is a question of Dialectics, in the Piatonic sense 
of that Word, as the science which discovers the 
true and false in thought, by discovering the 
true and false concerning the meanings of words, 
which represent thought." 

" Be it so. I should be glad to hold what 
Jane holds, for the sake of the marvellous prac- 
tical effect on her character — sweet creature that 
she is ! — which it has produced in the last seven 
years." 

" And which effect, I presume, was not in- 
creased by her denying to you any share in 
the same?" 

" Alas, no ! It is only when she falls on that — 
when she begins denouncing and excluding — that 
all the old faiüts, few and light as they are, seem 
to leap into ugly life again for the moment." 

" Few and light, indeed ! Ah, my dcar 
Templeton, the gulf between you and happiness 
looks wide ; but only because it is magnified 
in mist." 

"Which you would have me disperse by 
ligntning-flashes of Dialectics, eh ? Well, every 
man has his nostrum." 



PHAETHON. 83 

"I have not. My methocl is not my OAvn 
but Plato's." 

" Butj my good fellow, the Winclrush School 
adinire Plato as much as you do, and yet certainly 
arrive at somewhat different conclusions." 

" They do Plato the honour of patronising 
him, as a Representative Man; but their real 
text-book, you will find, is Proclus. That hapless 
Philosophaster's ä pnori method, even bis very 
verbiage, is dear to tbeir souls ; for tliey copy it 
throughwetand dry, through sense and nonsense. 
But as for Plato, — when I find them using Plato's 
weapons, I shall believe in tbeir understanding 
and love of bim." 

" And in tbe meanwbile, claim bim as a new 
verger for tbe Keformed Cburcb Catbolic ?" 

" Not a new verger, Templeton. Augustine 
Said, fourteen bundred years ago, tbat Socrates 
was tbe pbilosopber of tbe Catbolic Faitb. Ifbe 
has not seemed so of late years, it is, I suspect, 
because we do not understand quite tbe same 
tbing as Augustine did, wben we talk of tbe 
Catbolic Faitb and Cbristianity." 

" But you forget, in your burry of clerical 
confidence, tbat tbe question still remains, wbe- 
tber tbese Creeds are true." 

" Tbat, too, as I take it, is a question of 



84 PHAETHON. 

Dialectics, unless you choose to reduce tlie whole 
to a balance-of-probabilities-argument, — rather 
too narrow a basis for a Woiid-faith to stand 
upon. Tiy all ' mythic' theories, Straussite and 
others, bj honest Dialectics. Tiy your own 
thoughts and experiences, and the accredited 
thoughts and experiences of wise men, by the 
same method. Mesmerism and ' The Develop- 
ment of Species' may wait tili they have settled 
themselves somewhat more into sciences ; at 
present it does not much matter what agrees or 
disagrees with them. But usmg this weapon 
feaiiessly and honestly, you will, unless Socrates 
and Plato were fools, arrive at absolute eternal 
truthsj which are equally true for all men, good 
or bad, conscious or unconscious ; and I teil you 
— of course you need not believe nie tili you 
have made trial — that those truths will coincide 
with the piain, honest meaiiing of the CathoHc 
Creeds, as determined by the same method, — 
the only one, indeed, by which they or anything 
eise can be determined." 

"You forget Baconian induction, of which 
you are so fond." 

"And pray what are Dialectics, but strict 
Baconian induction applied to words, as the 
phenomena of mind, instead of to things, the 
phenomena of " 



PHAETHON. 85 

"What?" 

" I can't teil you ; or, ratlier, I will not. I 
liave my own opinion about what those trees and 
stones are ; but it it will require a few years more 
verification before I teil." 

" Really, you and your Dialectics seem in a 
hopeful and valiant state of mind." 

'^Why not? Can truth do anything but 
conquer ?" 

" Of course — assuming, as every one does, 
that the truth is with you." 

" My dear fellow, I have seldom met aman who 
could notbe a far better dialectician tlian I shall 
ever be, if he would but use liis Common Sense." 

" Common Sense ? That really sounds some- 
thing like a bathos, after the great big Greek 
Word which you have been propounding to me 
as the eure for all my doubts." 

" What ? Are you about to ' gib ' after all, 
just as I was flattering myself that I liad broken 
you in to go quietly in harness ?" 

" I am very much minded to do so. The 
truth is, I cannot bring myself to believe that 
the universal panacea lies in an obscure and 
ancient scientific method." 

" Obscure and ancient ? Did I not just say 
that any man might be a dialectician? Did 
8 



86 PHAETHON. 

Socrates ever appeal to any faculty but tlie 
Common Sense of man as man, which exists just 
as mucli in England now, I presume, as it did in 
Athens in his day ? Does he not, in pursuance 
of that method of his, draw his arguments and 
illustrations, to the horror of the big-worded 
Sophists, from dogs, kettles, fish-wives, and what 
not which is vulgär and common-place ? Or did 
I, in my clumsy attempt to Imitate him, make 
use of a Single argument which does not lie, 
developed or undeveloped, in the Common Sense 
of every clown ; in that human Reason of his, 
which is part of God's image in him; and in 
every man ? And has not my complaint against 
Mr. Windrush's school been, that they will not 
do this ; that they will not accept the ground 
which is common to men as men, but disregard 
that part of the ' Vox Populi ' which is truly ' Y ox 
Dei,' for that which is 'Vox Diaboh' — for private 
sentiments, fancies, and aspirations ; and so Cast- 
ing away the common sense of mankind, build 
up each man, on the pin's point of his own 
private judgment, his OAvn inverted pyramid T 

" But are you not asking me to do just the 
same, when you propo#e to me to start as a 
Scientific Dialectician ?" 

"Why, what are Dialectics, or any other 



•9 



PHAETHON. 87 

scientific method^ but conscious Common Sense ? 
And what is common sense, but unconscious 
scientific metliod ? Eveiy man is a dialectician, 
be lie Scholar or boor, in as far as he tries to use 
no words which he does not understand, and to 
sift his own thoughts, and his expressions of 
them^ by that reason which is at once common 
to men^ and independent of them. 

"As M. Jourdain talked prose all his life 
without knowing it. Well ... I prefer the 
unconscious method. I have as little faith as 
Mr. Carlyle would have in saying, ' Go to, let us 
make' — an induction ab out words, or anything 
eise. It seems to me no very hopeful method of 
finding out facts as they are.' 

" Certainly ; provided you mean any particular 
induction, and not a general inductive and 
severely-inquiring habit of mind; that very ^Go 
to' being a fair sign that you have settled 
beforehand what the induction shall be ; in piain 
English, that you have come to your conclusion 
already, and are now looking about for facts to 
prove it. But is it any wiser to say, ' Go to, 
I will be conscious of being unconscious of being 
conscious of my own forms of thought?' For 
that is what you do say, when, having read Plato, 
and knowing his method, and its coincidence 



88 PHAETHON. 

with Common Sense, you determine to ignore it 
on common-sense questions." 

" But why not ignore it, if mother-wit does 
as welir 

"Because you cannot ignore it. You have 
learnt it more or less, and cannot forget it, try as 
you willj and must either foUow it., or break it 
and talk nonsense. And moreover, you ouglit 
not to ignore it. For it seems to me, that you 
were sent to Cambridge by One greater than 
your parents, in order that you might learn it, 
and bring it home liither for the use of the 
M. Jourdains round you here, who have no 
doubt been talking prose all their life, but may 
have been also talking it very badly." 

" You speak riddles." 

"My dear fellow, may not a man employ 
Reason, or any other common human faculty, 
all his life, and yet employ them very clumsily 
and defectively ?" 

" I should say so, from the gross amount of 
human umvisdom." 

" And that, in the case of uneducated per- 
sons, happens because they are not conscious 
of those faculties, or of their right laws, but 
use them blindly and capriciously, by fits and 
Starts, talking sense on one point, and nonsense 
on another." 



PHAETHON. ^^ 



" Too true, Heaven knows ." 

" But the educated man, if education mean 
anything, is the man who has become conscious 
of those'common human faciüties and their laws, 
and has learnt to use them continuously and ac- 
curately, on all matters alike." 

" True, Socraticule 1" 

" Then is it not his especial business to teach 
the right use of them to the less educated ?— 
unless'you agree with the old Sophists, that the 
purpose of education is to enable us to deceive 
or coerce the uneducated for our own aggran- 

dizement." 

" I am therefore, it seems, to get up Platonic 
Dialectics simply in order to teach my plough- 
men to use their Common Sense ?" 

" Exactly so. Teach yourself first, and every 
one around you afterwards, not the doctrines, 
nor the formuliB— though he had none— but the 
habit of mind which Socrates tried in vain to 
teach the Athenian youth. Teach them to face 
all questions patiently and fearlessly : to begin 
always by asking every word, great or small, 
from ^ Predestination to ^Protection/ what it 
reaUy means. Teach them that ' By your ^Yords 
you shaU be justified, and by your words you 
shall be condemned/ is no barren pulpit-text, 

8* 



90 PHAETHON. 

but a tremendous practical law for every day, 
and for every matter. Teach them to be sure 
that man can find out truth, be cause God bis 
Father and Archetype will show it to those who 
hunger after it. Try to make them see clearly 
the Divine truths which are implied, not only in 
their creeds, but in their simplest household 
words; and " 

" And fail as Socrates failed, or rather worse ; 
for he did teach himself : but I shall not even 
do that." 

" Do not despair in haste. In the first place, 
I deny that Socrates taught himself, for I be- 
lle ve that One taught him, who has promised to 
teach every man who desires wisdom ; and in 
the next place I have no fear but that the sound 
practicalintellect which That Same One has be- 
stowed on the Engiishman, will give you a far 
better auditory in any harvest field, than Soc- 
rates could find among the mercurial Athenians 
of a fallen age." 

"Well, that is, at all events, a comfort for 
poor me. I will really take to my Plato again, 
tili the hunting begins." 

"And even then, you know, you don't keep 
two packs ; so you will have three days out of 
the six wherein to study him." 



PHAETHON. 91 

" Four, you mean, — for I have long given up 
reading Sunday books on Sunday." 

" Tlien read your Bible and Prayer-book ; or 
even' borrow some of Lady Jane's devotional 
treatises ; and try, after you have translated the 
latter into piain English, to make out what they 
one and all really do mean, by the light which 
old Socrates has given you during the week. 
You will find them wiser than you fancy, and 
simpler also." 

" So be it, my dear Soul-doctor. Here come 
Lewis and the luncheon." 

And so ended our conversation. 



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XVIII. 

WARNINGS OF THE HOLY WEEK. Being a Course of 
Parochial Lectures for the Week before Easter and the 
Easter Festivals. By Rev. Wm. Adams, M. A., Author of 
*'01d Man's Home/' &c. 37 cents. 

XIX. 

THE LIFE, and a Selection from the Letters of the late Rev. 
Henry Venn, M. A. By the late Rev. John Venn. $1. 

XX. 

TUE LAST ENEMY CONQUERING AND CONQUERED. 

By Bishop Burgess, of the Diocese of Maine. 75 cents. 

XXI. 

NAOMI, OR THE LAST DAYS OF JERUSALEM. By 
Mrs. Webb. From the ninth London edition. 75 cents. 



NÖTIGES OF THE PRESS. 

TUE BOY TRAINED TO BE A CLERGYMAN. By the 

Rev. J. N. Norton. 38 cents. 

The Register says — " A capital little book, containing a great 
deal that is good, and earnest, and true, M^ell-timed, and hap- 
pily spoken.'' 

Louisvüle Journal. 

*' A charming book. It is vrritten in that piain, transparent, 
good old English style for which the accomplished author is 
so distinguished. It is remarkable and refreshing in these 
days, when there is so much straining after effect, and such 
effort to startle the reader with new and surprising incidents, 
to und a book which will teil a story so naturally and so 
simply. The book Avill be read by every boy who cr.a read at 
all ; and it is well calculated to strengthen that moral courage 
which is the only true heroism, and in which so many are 
lamentably deficient. But there is a special lesson in this little 
book to parents, showing them, l)y what has been done, how 
most effectually to meet the great want of the Church in this 
age and country, an adequate supply of efiScicnt und wcll- 
trained ministers of the gospcl." 



4 CHURCH BOOKS PUBLISIIED BV H. HOOKER. 

Protestant Churchman. 

"On the basis of natural equalities of mind and heart fitted 
for usefulness in the ministry, the author inculcates the pro- 
priety of training up those who exhibit these characteristics, 
with a view to the sacred profession. Not this only, but he 
urges that parents need not wait for the manifestation of any 
decided preference, and that the preference may be created by 
an early direction of the mind and heart. The story is written 
with attractive simplicity, and the argument developed with 
skill.'^ . 

Banner oftlie Gross. 

"We have read this admirable little book with much in- 
terest. It is one which pious parents will delight to put into 
the hands of sons, whom they wish to devote themselves to the 
sacred ministry." 

Calendar. 

" This is just the book for every Christian parent to read, 
and by its interest and instruction, will well repay the cost 
of time. The story is told in a discriminating style, dropping 
gems of thought as it proceeds, in the mind of the reader. 
We hope parents will secure the book, and be induced, after 
prayer and reflection, to prepare and present one of their sons 
for the Service of God in his sacred ministry. The subject is 
altogether a new one for the basis of a tale, but the author 
evinces skill, as well as Christian zeal.'^ 

ChurcJi Journal. 

"The book is an excellent one, and is evidently largely 
mingled up with the element of personal reminiscence ; how 
far, we cannot teil ; but enough to give the real interest of 
biography to the whole. * * * Mr. Norton leaves us with his 
hcro looking forward to the struggles of a missionary at the 
West, where, we hope, to renew our acquaintance with hini 
soon, in an additional volume." 

The Churchman. 

"As we hope that some, nay, many of our little rcaders 
will one day think it their duty to become clergymen, we re- 
commend this pleasant and good little book to them, not only 
because it may help them to resolve on entering that holy call- 
ing, but also teach them how they ought to live and behave, if 
they would be either fit for the work, or useful and happy in 
it." 



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